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China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

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Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#301

Post by FooHentai »

Theodores wrote: post #254
segmondy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we figure out this remote business? If more people, just 10% of the population work remote full time, can you imagine the difference?

Because the roads then fill up with commuters that come in from even further away. Imagine your typical city - jobs in the centre, housing on the outskirts, everyone doing the rush hour thing. People might be prepared to give up three hours of their day for the required commute. Now if a magic wand is waved and people start to work at home then those desks in the city centre will still be there. If the roads are that…

I dunno, you're pinning your dismissal of the initial idea on 'those desks in the city centre will still be there' when it's entirely feasible they'll just reduce over time in-line with demand. In fact, we see that right now with the trend towards unallocated desking and flexible working, where desk numbers within the same floor space is being reduced in favour of deploying more collaboration spaces and allowing more staff to work away from the office in a manner than suits them. That's what that reduction in office density downtown looks like in practice.

Then your counter proposal depends on people being able to 'swap jobs' while handwaving away the complexity that would involve. Most knowledge worker roles aren't that fungible.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#302

Post by knolax »

axaxs wrote: post #297
flexie wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would people downvote this comment? Agree or disagree, but downvoting a completely harmless comment like this is just bad for the conversations here.

I did. And I don't mean to violate rules or to be insulting, but it set off my skepticism side. The comment, to me, did not seem to be from someone who writes English as a first language. The account is two days old, and has made only two pro-China comments. I mean no offense to the poster, but I'll remain skeptical for now.

Hacker News Guidelines: "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#303

Post by akiselev »

kd5bjo wrote: post #111
chiefalchemist wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of the exact details but taxis are different. Think of any big city taxi - NYC, London, etc. - you've ever gotten into. Bigger. Boxier. More trunk space, etc. Now consider GM's plant closing in the USA. Plants are configured to produce certain vehicles. Volume matters. Yes, cars and taxis are close, but for a number of reasons probably not as close as you think.

Until recently, the most common vehicle I saw being used as a taxi was a Ford Crown Victoria -- a large standard sedan with an aftermarket partition between the front and back seats.

Most likely because they were mass produced by Ford for commercial fleets - most notably for many (if not most) police departments in the United States and Canada. Ford stopped producing them in 2011, so they've slowly been making their way out of the rotation.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#304

Post by hokkos »

joncrane wrote: post #229
datpuz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have heard wrong.

Source(s)?

https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...

-80% CO2eq emission for an EV compared to a diesel car in my country.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#305

Post by hokkos »

joncrane wrote: post #220

I've heard that the environmental impact of building the vehicles (the batteries in particular) and charging them outweighs the savings in emissions. Basically batteries use lots of toxic chemicals and require LOTS of energy during manufacture. Also isn't most electricity generation in China still based on burning coal? Have any experts done any analysis to see what environmental benefit this brings, if any?

Please read that : https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#306

Post by hokkos »

lolive wrote: post #56

Let's consider hydrogen cars are the next big thing. Is it a good move to go massively towards electric cars? Especially regarding batteries that will have to be massively replaced in 2 years?

Let's not, it cost 80k$ for a Mirai and it use 4 times more electricity than an EV. With a more complex infrastructure to build.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#307

Post by janekm »

chillacy wrote: post #6

Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they do is there's an added fee to ride red taxis, so people avoid them like they're plague-ridden when they have other options. I thought that was a brilliant use of taxing externalities, you let customers decide whether paying the fee is worth it.

All the buses are electric too, they finished replacing them at the end of the last year. Like you said taxis seem to be about 95% replaced now (was only about 30% last year, this city moves crazy fast, there are around 20000 taxis in the city). It helps that BYD is a Shenzhen company and all the electric taxis and most of the buses are made by them.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#308

Post by Theodores »

FooHentai wrote: post #301
Theodores wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the roads then fill up with commuters that come in from even further away. Imagine your typical city - jobs in the centre, housing on the outskirts, everyone doing the rush hour thing. People might be prepared to give up three hours of their day for the required commute. Now if a magic wand is waved and people start to work at home then those desks in the city centre will still be there. If the roads are that…

I dunno, you're pinning your dismissal of the initial idea on 'those desks in the city centre will still be there' when it's entirely feasible they'll just reduce over time in-line with demand. In fact, we see that right now with the trend towards unallocated desking and flexible working, where desk numbers within the same floor space is being reduced in favour of deploying more collaboration spaces and allowing more…

Doesn't sound like you grasp market economics as applied to rents in city centres.

I also think you are the handwavy one here with negative overtones. You underestimate the ability of people to actually adapt and to do jobs with a little bit of training. You, up on your fungible high horse also seem to assume that everyone does some expert job like what you do and obviously can't be replaced. Have you even worked in a normal office and spoken to your co-workers that do things like sales, tech support, marketing and other things? Get a grip.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#309

Post by woodandsteel »

D_Alex wrote: post #138
paganel wrote: post #85

Why don't we bring trolleybuses back? They rock! You don't need polluting batteries in order to run them, just some copper to put the wires up, and we've been master of this "technology" for almost a century now. Also, we should extend or re-introduce the tram network.

Simply because electric buses are the superior technology right now. Metro bus services is actually an ideal application for electric vehicles: The needed range is short, charging facilities can be in one place (depot), stop-start driving suits the propulsion system, and low noise and no emissions are a bonus in the highly populated areas.

>Simply because electric buses are the superior technology right now.

Trolleybuses were invented because at the time electric storage technology wasn't good enough.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#310

Post by moltar »

Reason077 wrote: post #168
agsdfgsd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

If building a new network from scratch or replacing diesel, then yes, there is no doubt that battery electrics are cheaper. Also, batteries are charged overnight, allowing cheap off-peak energy to be used. The argument about batteries being damaging to the environment mostly relates to cobalt mining. However, buses typically use iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries which contain no cobalt.

And coincidently, here’s an article from today:

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/success-of-montr...

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